Okay, you made your cast, fooled your fish, and set the hook with a good, long strip-set. Your prized bonefish takes off at lightning speeds in the opposite direction, about to battle the well engineered disc drag of your fancy new fly reel and.. Pop! He’s off.

What happened? Odds are your fly line has wrapped around the fighting butt of your rod, fetching up to a violent stop, causing your tippet to snap. Sound familiar? We thought so.

A lot can go wrong in the time between setting the hook on a bonefish and getting him on the reel. Bonefish are fast, and there’s a lot of things for your fly line to hang up on in the process, the rod butt being one of those things. Therefore, effectively clearing line is extremely important to avoiding break-offs.

But how do we make sure the line doesn’t hang up around the rod butt before getting on the reel? Easy. Simply follow this tip from Andros South guide, Charlie Sweeting.. Keep the fighting butt against your forearm!

Doing so ensures the line has no chance of wrapping around the butt of the rod, giving you time to get him on the reel and put the heat on. Easy, right?